Link to this page

https://gebible.app/messianic-prophecies/catalog/jeremiah-31-31

Messianic Prophecies

Jeremiah 31:31

This passage comes from the wider catalog — a broader, more lightly curated list than the core set. Both readings are shown as peers; GEBible takes no side.

Show this passage in

WEB

Jeremiah 31:31

“Behold, the days come,” says Yahweh, “that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:

Read in context

Show the surrounding verses

On this I awakened, and saw; and my sleep was sweet to me.

“Behold, the days come,” says Yahweh, “that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and with the seed of animal. It will happen that, like as I have watched over them to pluck up and to break down and to overthrow and to destroy and to afflict, so I will watch over them to build and to plant,” says Yahweh.

“In those days they will say no more, “ ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’

But everyone will die for his own iniquity. Every man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth will be set on edge.

“Behold, the days come,” says Yahweh, “that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:

not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which covenant of mine they broke, although I was a husband to them,” says Yahweh.

“But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” says Yahweh: “I will put my law in their inward parts, and I will write it in their heart. I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

They will no longer each teach his neighbor, and every man teach his brother, saying, ‘Know Yahweh;’ for they will all know me, from their least to their greatest,” says Yahweh: “for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

Yahweh, who gives the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, who stirs up the sea, so that its waves roar; Yahweh of Armies is his name, says:

“If these ordinances depart from before me,” says Yahweh, “then the offspring of Israel also will cease from being a nation before me forever.”

The fulfillment reading

How this passage is read as pointing to the Messiah.

On the messianic-fulfillment reading, Jeremiah 31:31-34 promises a new covenant unlike the covenant made at the exodus — one marked by internalized law written on the heart, universal knowledge of God, and complete forgiveness. This reading identifies that new covenant as inaugurated by Jesus, whose Last Supper words connect his death to covenant-blood, and it points especially to the extended quotation and exposition of the oracle in Hebrews 8:8-12. The defining features are held to be realized through the Spirit's work: internal transformation, direct access to God, and forgiveness through atonement. The explicit "new covenant" wording at Luke 22:20 and 1 Corinthians 11:25 is taken to confirm the christological application.

The counter-reading

How this passage is read within its own context.

The critical reading notes that Jeremiah's own horizon is the restoration of the house of Israel and the house of Judah rather than a later gentile church. It observes that Matthew 26:28, in the critical text (NA28/NRSVUE), reads "blood of the covenant" without the word "new" — the longer wording enters via later Textus Receptus manuscripts — so Matthew's institution words echo Exodus 24:8 more directly than they echo Jeremiah 31. On this account the explicit Jeremiah linkage is clearest in other New Testament texts (Luke, Paul, Hebrews), and the Matthean connection rests on covenant-blood imagery. Whether the correspondence is specific prediction or retrospective identification remains the open question.

How the New Testament uses this passage

Each entry names how the New Testament author draws on the passage — a direct quotation, an allusion, an echo, or a typological reading. An echo or an allusion is not the same as a prediction; the label says which is which.

  • Matthew 26:28 Echo

    Matthew 26:28's covenant-blood language echoes Exodus 24:8 rather than quoting Jeremiah 31; the direct quotation of Jer 31:31-34 occurs elsewhere (Hebrews 8:8-12), and the explicit 'new covenant' phrase appears in Luke 22:20 / 1 Cor 11:25, not in the fulfillmentRef given.